Countries around the world honor International Missing Children’s Day on May 25

May 25 , 2013

International Missing Children’s Day on May 25

To commemorate International Missing Children’s Day, law enforcement and non-governmental organisations across four continents are holding events to raise awareness about the need for collaboration and a coordinated response to help protect children from abduction and going missing.

They are part of the Global Missing Children’s Network – a program of the International Centre for Missing & Exploited Children (ICMEC) – which helps bring attention to the vulnerability of children who are missing and abducted.

It’s a problem facing every country and it needs the attention of law enforcement and government officials around the world.  It is estimated that at least 8 million children worldwide go missing each year or 22,000 a day. Unfortunately, many countries do not view it as a priority and thus don’t have appropriate mechanisms in place to recover missing children who are at high risk of being exploited into trafficking and prostitution. Every country should implement policies and legislation to tackle the issue and protect children’s right to grow up in a safe environment. This will require coordinated efforts between all sectors from law enforcement agencies, government, and non-governmental agencies to private industry.

It is also important to teach children how to stay safe and inform them of risks they may encounter. To achieve this, adults should take the time to provide children with the tools they need to recognise danger and to talk with them about specific ways to stay safe. ICMEC, through the Global Network, has developed prevention tips to help parents, guardians and other adults discuss safety with children. These tips are available in 10 different languages.

Each year, since 1983, May 25 has been commemorated to remember children who are still missing, children who have been reunited with their families, and to help bring this global issue to the attention of government and society.

 

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INTERNATIONAL PARENTAL CHILD ABDUCTION – ABP World Group – CHILD RECOVERY SERVICES

May 22, 2013

Tragically International Child Abduction has reached global epidemic proportions.  According to leading experts the increase in inter-racial marriages and relationships  will, in the future, lead to a significant rise in the number of children born to parents of different nationalities 

“It is a great misconception that a child abducted by a parent is a safe child” - Martin Waage, ABP World Group Ltd.

As is true for all relationships, a statistically significant number of these marriages or partnerships will also end in divorce. All too often, following the breakup of a marriage, one of the parents will abduct a child of that relationship against the wishes of the other parent,  frequently removing them to a country where the child has probably never lived. This is called “International Parental Child Abduction”.

Although there are various civil remedies available to parents of abducted children, the challenges they face are enormous, including first and foremost, locating  the child.

Unfortunately for the majority of targeted parents, the financial burden involved in recovery and litigation falls upon their shoulders. With tens of thousands of children abducted by parents each year, the reality is that too many of these children never come home.  ABP World Group is dedicated to assisting those parents who need help in locating, rescuing, and returning  their abducted child home safely.

Statement from a US client:

“After all my years of experience as Worldwide Medical Director for the worlds largest medical assistance company, I found only ABP World capable of providing the unique service of non-violent recovery of a abducted child. It is very difficult to find a company like ABP World that can provide the experience, honesty, integrity, and assets to actually recover an abducted child safely and at a reasonable cost. I hold ABP World in highest regard and recommend them whole heartedly. The world is simply a better place because of the work they do.”

Our intelligence and investigative capabilities combined with our ability to dispatch personnel to most locations in the world offer a safe and strategic solution to protecting what is most important to you, your child.

Unfortunately in this present climate parental kidnapping occurs all too frequently and we are here to help you through this extremely traumatic period.

We are aware that parental child abduction can be difficult to resolve, but through the use of professional operatives with the skills and expertise necessary to find a resolution. We are here to help you.

ABP World Group’s successful recovery and re-unification strategies rely on the use of all the means available  including, but not limited to:

Electronic Forensic Foot printing Investigations

. Intelligence Gathering

. Information Specialists/Skip Tracing

. Evidence Procurement

. Interview/Evaluation

. Surveillance Special Ops

. Non-Combatant Evacuation Ops

. Domestic Support

. International Operations

. Maritime/Land/Air transport

Danish Client:
“I have received assistance from ABP World Group in bringing my kidnapped child back home. The situation demanded alternative solutions in order to bring my child safely home, as the country where my child was kidnapped to, did not actively participate in helping solving the kidnapping. In this regard ABP World Group proved to be invaluable help. They provided the necessary experience in dealing with these matters and throughout the planning and execution always kept calm and seemed prepared for everything. It was my impression that the safety of my child and myself was always the top priority, and they always made sure to take any necessary precautions through detailed planning rather than pursuing a quick solution.

I can definitively recommend getting assistance from ABP World Group to anyone else in the same situation”

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Risk Management – Kidnapping Gangs Shift from Venezuela-Colombia Border

May 21, 2013

Source: insightcrime.org

Binational kidnapping gangs made up of Colombians and Venezuelans are spreading from the border states into central Venezuela, fuelling a trend that has seen Venezuela overtake Colombia as a kidnapping hotspot.

Over the course of a week,Venezuelan courts sentencedseven Colombians and one Venezuelan to prison for kidnapping in the central state of Yaracuy, while an alleged kidnapping gang consisting of four Venezuelans and one Colombian was broken up in the border state of Tachira.

According to police sources cited by El Nacional, the cases are part of a trend that in recent months has seen Colombian and Venezuelan kidnappers working together both in western and central Venezuela. According to the newspaper, there have also been reports of binational gangs in the Capital District and the states of Merida and Zulia, near the border.

InSight Crime Analysis

Over the last decade, Venezuela and Colombia have been on opposite trajectories when it comes to kidnapping. In 2012, Colombia recorded 85 percent less kidnappings than in 2002, when the country was renowned as the world’s kidnapping capital. In contrast, kidnapping in Venezuela rose by an estimated 430 percent between 1999 and 2011 (although statistics from Venezuelan should be approached cautiously, as a lack of trust in official figures has led to organizations using estimates rather than the officially reported numbers). In 2012, there were 1,970 kidnappings in Venezuela, according to a study by criminologist Fermin Marmol Garcia, compared to 305 in Colombia.

The Venezuela-Colombia border is a hive for criminal activity, much of it fuelled by the cross-border operations of narco-paramilitary groups such as the Rastrojos. Colombian guerrilla groups like the FARC and the ELN are know to conduct kidnapping operations in Colombian border states like Arauca, then move their victims into Venezuela, where the ransom is then collected. The general atmosphere of lawlessness in this border region has almost certainly contributed to the growth of binational kidnapping rings, including those which are now reportedly moving away from the frontier states and more deeply into Venezuelan territory.

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International Parental Child Abduction – Japan’s Child Kidnapping Problem

May 20, 2013

Source: thedailybeast

Dozens of American children are abducted to Japan every year—not by strangers, but by parents after messy divorces. As Nathalie-Kyoko Stucky and Jake Adelstein report, divorce laws protective of Japanese nationals encourage such illegal abductions.

Japan has a child-kidnapping problem. It’s not strangers snatching the kids on the playground or at the bus stop; the problem is that when a Japanese national divorces a foreigner overseas, he or she can abduct their children and bring them back to Japan, and the law ensures that the parent left behind has no rights to see the children or take them back home. The U.S. State Department reports that there have been over 100 such kidnappings since 1994, but according to a source, the number is closer to 400. Within Japan itself, divorce often means that one parent may have little or no access to the child. Japan’s inability to deal with child abduction partly stems from archaic family law in Japan that does not recognize joint custody. It’s a winner-take-all system. The law makes it almost impossible for the other parent to even meet the child, if the Japanese partner objects.

Mika Chiba, at a meeting on the Hague Convention held at the Japanese Diet on March 12, showing pictures of her abducted son. (Nathalie Stucky)

“Once the child is on Japanese soil, if the foreign parent tries to take them back to their home country, we have to treat him or her as a kidnapper—unless the Japanese courts have clearly given them custody,” a police officer from Tokyo told us. “Most of the time, we imagine the Japanese parent is shielding the child from domestic abuse or a poor living environment. Maybe sometimes the foreign parent is actually trying to rescue his or her child from an abusive Japanese household, but we can’t make that judgment. The non-Japanese trying to take back their child is the criminal in most cases. The law is the law.”

After 30 years of international pressure, Japan’s National Diet is expected to endorse the Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction this month and approve necessary legislation possibly by the end of the year. At present, 89 countries are members of the Hague abduction convention, which went into effect in 1983. Japan is the only G8 country that is not a member.

If the Diet ratifies the treaty by the end of May, as predicted, it would extend custody rights to non-Japanese parents whose children have been taken to Japan by their former spouses. After ratification, the Japanese government will have to take steps to ensure that the treaty is actually upheld. Under the convention, the parents of abductees will have a legal framework to request their children be returned. However, the convention prohibits returning children to the country of residence if they face grave danger, including domestic violence. Questions remain as to the burden of proof that will be required for Japanese nationals who refuse to return the children, using allegations of “grave danger.”

The U.S. State Department has been conducting surveys on the number of abducted American children since 1994. The numbers are difficult to assess because not all parents report abductions to the authorities. Victims of child abduction are hard to track officially, because Japan and many countries do not consider it a vital statistic. Also, child abduction by a parent is not considered a crime in Japan once the family court grants the sole custody to one parent. However, some researchers have been keeping track of the numbers by gathering information from town-hall meetings and correspondence with the families of the abducted. According to one knowledgeable source, between 1994 and 2012, there were 278 cases involving 386 American children taken back to Japan.

“There are no official numbers,” explained Yuichi Mayama, a member of the Diet. “Even we lawmakers, when we tried to ask the government for the exact number of cases, got no real answer. The answer we got was that probably after the Hague Convention comes into effect, it may be possible to track the numbers.”

“Simply because a marriage breaks down, that does not necessarily imply that the children should lose one of their parental relations,” said John Gomez, chairman of the recently founded nonprofit organization Kizuna Child-Parent Reunion. He notes that many pediatricians and child-care experts assert that children thrive when they have relationships with both of their parents, even after the marriage is over. But there is a concept in Japanese society that after a divorce, it is natural for one parent to give up the right to raise the child. Article 766 of Japan’s Civil Code states that a family court should decide who will have custody over a child. The extent of visitation and other means of contact between the child and their parents are also made by the court. There is no joint custody in Japan.

Experts estimate that each year close to 150,000 divorced parents in Japan lose contact with their children. Some choose to do this; most have no say in the matter. While it’s obvious that international divorce in Japan is often an ugly affair that splits children from their parents, it should also be noted that domestic divorce cases are often as bad.

Takao Tanase, a lawyer who is a law professor at Chuo University in Tokyo, notes that Japan does have a criminal clause declaring child abduction a crime, and cases of domestic abduction are not unknown. “However, the first abduction is usually not treated as a crime,” he said. “After a parental dispute, once the de facto custodian is designated by the Japanese family court, the left-behind Japanese parent can be arrested by the police if he or she tries to take back the child from the custodian parent.”

In September 2009, Christopher Savoie, an American-born, naturalized Japanese father, was arrested for allegedly abducting his son and daughter from his ex-wife, who had taken them to Japan illegally. Noriko Savoie had been granted custody on the condition that she permanently reside in Tennessee, but she violated the court order when she took the children to her native Japan. A month later, Christopher Savoie was thrown in jail in Japan on child-abduction charges when he tried to take the children back to the U.S. The case brought global attention to Japan’s failure to endorse the Hague Convention.

There is no joint custody in Japan.

When Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe visited President Obama in February, he reportedly promised that Japan would join the convention on child abductions. “From the perspective of children, there is an increasing number of international marriages and divorces,” Abe told reporters. “We believe it is important to have international rules.”

Joining the Hague Convention will not immediately affect divorced Japanese couples, but it may play a significant role in the transformation of Japanese society and family law.

“We recognize that even if the Hague Convention is ratified, we will have to make many changes in our domestic laws to be consistent” with the convention, councilor Mayama said in a press conference held last week. “At least the Japanese government recognizes these problems. We Japanese have a very traditional view of the family system. It may take time for these changes. We are working on the necessary legislation. Japan will try to make a change in the domestic laws by March of 2014.”

When international marriages break up, Japanese courts almost never grant custody to foreign parents, especially fathers. However, Japanese parents can also come out on the wrong side of the law.

Mika Chiba, 42, works as an accountant. Japanese doctors diagnosed her with schizophrenia in early 2010, and she lost the custody of her two sons, Thomas, 10, and Jonathan, 5, when she entered a mental hospital for a nine-month stay. Just before she returned from her hospitalization, her husband took their children to Manchester, and she followed him there and took him to court.

The U.K. court, citing the Hague Convention, ruled in April 2011 that Chiba’s husband had illegally abducted their two children, and therefore the family should return to Japan to decide the custody of the children in a Japanese court. The family arrived in Japan two months later, and the custody battle is currently being fought. But because there is no joint custody in Japan, and because of her nine-month absence when she was hospitalized, the children have been placed with their father, and Chiba lost visitation rights after she quarreled with her husband in July 2011. She hasn’t spent time alone with her children since then.

“I think the Japanese laws should be changed to discourage abduction and allow joint custody,” Chiba said. “If both parents could look after their kids after divorce, then there would be less abduction or maybe none. I think this is the problem in the Japanese law.”

In early February, we followed a French-speaking national, who asked not to be identified, when he visited Japan hoping to meet with his daughter. He does not have custody of his child, nor did the Japanese courts grant him visitation rights.

He went to her home, but was told by his former mother-in-law that she wasn’t there. He then tried to visit her at her school the next day. He asked the school’s principal if he could give her a waterproof camera he had bought for his daughter as a birthday present. “Sir, in Japan, the child has no right to choose if she can see her [noncustodial] parent, after a divorce,” the principal said. “If I handed this present to your daughter without the consent of your ex-wife, I could be in trouble” with the police. He waited for seven hours near the school before going back to the airport and was not able to speak with his daughter or even catch a glimpse of her.

“I don’t want to fight the Japanese authorities, because it will not help me see my daughter. I cannot win their confidence if I do the bad things,” he said. “I hope my daughter will not forget her father and, when she will become an adult, she will try to find me, because she will look for her other cultural roots.”

He hopes that the ratification of the Hague Convention may spur changes in domestic law that will allow him to have some role in raising his daughter. But his hope may be misplaced.

“I think that it will be difficult to convince the hardheaded lawmakers” to fully honor the convention,” said Tsuyoshi Shiina, another Diet member. “They believe it is a matter of ‘cultural conflict.’”

Prof. Takao Tanase also believes that Japan will ratify the convention, but not fully implement it. “Japan fundamentally supports current family-law practices. That’s why there is a strong discrepancy between the domestic law and the international standards, and that will impact negatively upon the implementation of the convention in good faith,” he said. “If the Hague Convention is ratified, and foreign nations recognize that Japan really does not comply with it, there should be a lot of pressure and criticism from the international community. I am hoping that it is the international pressure that is going to push Japan into really implementing the convention.”

It seems certain that Japan will finally sign the Hague Convention, but the implementation of it may take a very long time. Parents waiting in legal limbo to be with their children hope that it will not take another 30 years.

Nathalie-Kyoko Stucky is a freelance journalist in Tokyo. She was an assistant correspondent for the Japanese news agency Jiji Press in Geneva, and has contributed to the book Reconstructing 3/11, and is the chief editor at Japan Subculture Research Center.

Jake Adelstein has been an investigative journalist in Japan since 1993. Considered one of the foremost experts on organized crime in Japan, he works as a writer and consultant in Japan and the United States. He is also an advisor to NPO Polaris Project Japan, which combats human trafficking and the exploitation of women and children in the sex trade. He is the author of Tokyo Vice: An American Reporter on the Police Beat in Japan (Vintage) and the forthcomingThe Last Yakuza: A Life In The Japanese Underworld.

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Gun violence against women is a serious problem- Amazon: Remove “The Ex” shooting target

May 8, 2013

Source: weareultraviolet.org

A shooting target mannequin named the “The Ex,” a large-breasted woman who bleeds when shot, is being sold on Amazon.com. It’s manufactured by Zombie Industries, a company that was featured at the NRA convention last weekend.

Gun violence against women is a serious problem. But “The Ex” shooting target turns violence against women into a joke and promotes the idea that men should want to kill their ex-wives or ex-girlfriends. Zombie Industries has already had to pull a mannequin target that resembled President Obama, so they are definitely attracting media attention right now–and it’s just the kind of bad press Amazon doesn’t want.

If we all speak up about this horrible “Ex” target we can get Amazon to do the right thing and stop carrying this dangerous product. Can you sign the petition?

Sign it here

Your message to Amazon.com:

“Zombie Industries ‘The Ex’ shooting target–a large-breasted woman who bleeds when shot–promotes domestic violence and partner homicide and should not be sold on your website. Please remove this horrible product immediately.”

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International Parental Child Abduction – Child Recovery Services

May 6, 2013

Watch our new video about International Parental Child Abduction and Child Recovery Services

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CMo8e1UcNRM

Parental Abduction and Child Recovery

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Risk Assessment – Threat of ‘lone wolf’ terrorism growing, experts warn

April 30, 2013

Source: The daily telegraph

All eyes may be on Africa, but there are fears of a new, unpredictable threat in the west: the so-called “lone wolf”.

This isn’t about a particular country or cause, and some worry it could be a growing trend.

In 2011 Anders Behring Breivik shocked the world with a Norwegian terror rampage. He bombed government buildings in Oslo before going on a shooting spree at a camp held by the country’s Labour Party. The bombings killed eight people, and the shooting left 69 dead.

Breivik was later found to hold various far-right beliefs, including a perception of Islam and Marxism as “the enemy”.

There are fears this kind of attack could happen more often.

Workplace violence

In America, Nidal Malik Hasan is set to undergo court martial proceedings this year after being accused of carrying out a mass shooting at the Fort Hood military base in Texas. The shooting, which happened in 2009, left 13 dead and 30 injured.

The Fort Hood attack is regarded by some as terrorism because of Hasan’s alleged radicalisation, with reports he had been emailing Anwar al-Awlaki, a cleric and alleged al-Qaeda recruiter based in Yemen, and monitored for several years as a security threat. The US Department of Defence, however, has referred to it as an act of workplace violence.

Lone wolf attacks could be related to various forms of extremism – for example, Islamism or neo-Nazism – but the danger is that they are hard to track. People operating alone can be harder to follow than a large organisation.

In a recent book, Lone Wolf Terrorism: Understand the Growing Threat, security consultant Jeffrey D Simon argues that lone wolves can be more creative than terrorist groups.

Terrorist breeding ground

He also points out the importance of the internet as a potential breeding ground for terrorists – though this is also an opportunity for counter-terrorism agencies to monitor potential threats.

Britons present their own risks, with a potential rise in British-born terrorists who have trained abroad before returning to the UK.

Last year the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) think tank predicted that terrorists could put their training in countries including Somalia, Yemen or Nigeria to use on UK streets.

In a report, RUSI director-general Michael Clarke wrote: “The threat they pose, so far, is in the possibility that high numbers of such individuals, operating alone and unsupported, albeit in an amateur way, may nevertheless be lucky in a few attempts.

“They are harder to track and their behaviour much harder to predict.”

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Parental Child Abduction – Dominican Republic

April 20, 2013

As a signatory of to the Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction, the Dominican Republic is responsible to secure the prompt return of children wrongfully removed to or retained. Dominican is presently retaining several U.S. children for over a year without a return order from the courts. Meanwhile fit and loving parents are denied all contact with their children.

Through a well-funded Department of Human Services, the United States is well equipped to prevent any return exposing a child to physical or psychological harm or placing the child in an intolerable situation. Additionally, the U.S. has the infrastructure and resources to provide desperately needed services to by children and parents. In contrast, the Dominican Republic burdened with education problems, a high rate of child abuse, and domestic violence. It is more likely that a child would be exposed an intolerable situation in the Dominican Republic than the United States. We respectfully request that the Dominican courts promptly hear all Hague return request and provide a respective return order for each child with a habitual U.S. Residence. In Addition, we request that regular contact be allowed between children and parents while awaiting a return order.

 

“Abducted children suffer emotionally and sometimes physically at the hands of abductor-parents. Many children are told the other parent is dead or no longer loves them. Uprooted from family and friends, abducted children often are given new names by their abductor-parents and instructed not to reveal their real names or where they lived before.” (Hoff, 1997)

The Dominican Republic has a long history of human rights violations from refusing birth documents to children born from Haitian parents, police executions, and human trafficking. The Dominican Republic courts have delayed and denied the return of Minor U.S. Citizen illegally removed from the United States. As a signatory of to the Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction, the Dominican Republic is responsible to secure the prompt return of children wrongfully removed to or retained.

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Europol : Mexican cartels gain ground in European drug trade

April 14, 2013

Source: LA Times

MEXICO CITY—Mexican drug cartels are striving to become “key players in the European drugs market,”  Europol officials said Friday.

Their statement, issued from Europol headquarters in the Hague, said that Mexican criminals have become “global market coordinators” in trafficking cocaine and synthetic drugs to Europe. Police officials also alleged that Mexicans were moving firearms from southeast Europe and trading them with cocaine dealers in the Americas. They also specifically cited the Zetas cartel–perhaps the most ruthless of the Mexican gangs—for reportedly trafficking human beings “for sexual exploitation” from northeast Europe to Mexico.

Concerns about the presence of Mexican cartels in Europe are not new, but the statement by theEuropean Union’s top crime-fighting agency underscores a growing worry about the Mexican criminal groups’ ambitious plans for global expansion. Fears have spread across the Mexican border to nearby Texas, and as far away as Southeast Africa.

Last month, Texas’ public safety department declared that Mexican cartels were the “the most significant organized crime threat” to the Lone Star State. Along with other criminal groups, the cartels are suspected not only to be deeply involved in the Texas drug trade, but also to be responsible for extortion, kidnappings, public corruption and money laundering, according to the report, an annual threat assessment issued by the agency.

In May, a deputy administrator for the Drug Enforcement Administration told a group of U.S. senators that Mexican cartels are involved in the African methamphetamine trade, and have “documented links” to criminal groups in Mozambique, Ghana, Nigeria, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

“We haven’t identified specific cartel activity in Africa,” a DEA official told the Voice of America in June. “We’ve identified Mexicans in Africa, and we know they are affiliated with cartels – we just haven’t put it together.”

The Europol statement said that law enforcement officials had recently “averted” the Sinaloa Cartel’s attempts to set up a major European cocaine wholesaling operation. Thus far, according to the report, few violent incidents in Europe have been attributed to the Mexicans.

“We do not want the level of violence and brutality which we see in Mexico mirrored in Europe,” said Rob Wainwright, the Europol director.

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Search continues for two boys believed abducted from Florida

April 5 2013

Source:

This is not the first time a man with ties to Louisiana is suspected of abducting his two young sons. Last year, the boys’ biological father reportedly kidnapped them at gunpoint from foster care in Louisiana.

Today, authorities in Louisiana and several other states continue to search for Joshua Michael Hakken, a 35-year-old with ties to the Slidell area who is suspected of taking his 4- and 2-year-old sons from their maternal grandparents’ home in Florida after tying up their grandmother.

“It’s the manner in which the kids were taken that concerns law enforcement,” FBI Special Agent Dave Couvertier said during a news conference today.

Hakken, 35, entered his mother-in-law’s house north of Tampa, tied her up and fled with the children, authorities say. Hakken, the boys and the boys’ mother might be traveling in a black 2006 GMC pickup bearing University of Florida license plate U95KT.

Tips about 4-year-old Cole Hakken and 2-year-old Chase Hakken have poured in from several states, an FBI agent and a Hillsborough County, Fla., sheriff’s spokesman said during a news conference.

Officials say Hakken and 34-year-old Sharyn Patricia Hakken are the prime suspects in the abduction. “Both suspects are anti-government and have attempted a previous abduction at gunpoint in Louisiana,” an earlier news release says. Authorities are focused on the children and not the parents’ political views, Couvertier said. “We’re working on the safe return of the entire family, specifically the children. We don’t anticipate or expect them to hurt their children. And, hopefully, we can put the family back together.”

The Hillsborough sheriff’s office has issued an arrest warrant for Joshua Hakken. He faces two counts each of kidnapping, child neglect and false imprisonment and one count each of burglary with a battery and grand theft auto.

Joshua Hakken lost custody of his sons last year after his arrest on a drug possession charge, authorities say. He later tried to take them at gunpoint from a foster home in Louisiana, they added.

The two boys have been living with their maternal grandparents since last year, officials said. A Louisiana court informed the Hakkens on Tuesday that they’d been stripped of their parental rights. This morning, the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation issued a statewide alert after the family’s vehicle was believed to have been seen about 8 p.m. Wednesday in Etowah in southeast Tennessee.

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